Mathematical and Philological Insights on Cuneiform Texts. Neugebauer's Correspondence with Fellow Assyriologists

International audienceOne of the most remarkable features of mathematics from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt is that it has reached us from archaeological sources. We appear to have before us texts written and used by the ancient scholars themselves, and not, as is most often the case with texts transmitted through a long written tradition, which may have profoundly transformed the original work. Does this mean that historians of the ancient Near East have direct, unbiased access to the original ancient texts? It would be an illusion to believe this on at least two counts. First, archaeological sources themselves, including the oldest, are for the most part the result of textual transformation such as compilations, copies, translations, dictations, and many other processes, the history of which is difficult to reconstruct. Second, for the historian, access to his sources can only be gained through the mediation of the work of the scholars who made the texts available through process such as cataloging, copying, and editing. This chapter scrutinizes the effects of such intermediaries